


knife dance

by anaiata



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst, Because of Reasons, F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon, Tags May Change, but there will be - Freeform, inej is frickin awesome, inej pov, irregular updates, no beta we die like men, no mourners no funerals, since this spontaneously jumped into my brain and I haven't got the rest of it planned out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26926861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaiata/pseuds/anaiata
Summary: the saints are her claws.or, a bunch of one-shots about how Inej got each of her knives.
Relationships: Kaz Brekker & Inej Ghafa
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	knife dance

The first night at the Slat, she knows she won’t be able to sleep.

She knows it like the chill that seeps through to her bones, like the way her heart hammers against the inside of her ribs, the tremors in her hands, the way she feels like she’s on the verge of falling.

But Ghafas never fall, so she doesn’t.

She sits cross-legged on the floor instead, watching the lamp in front of her flicker, casting strange shadows on the blank walls. The room is small, barely large enough for the cot and the chair and the trunk it contains, though she owns so little that it hardly matters. 

She is wearing new clothes, the fabric still stiff and strange against her skin. The window is open and unbarred. The air isn’t heavy with incense. There is not a  _ hint  _ of purple silk or gold or any of the Menagerie’s ostentation.

It feels wrong. False. 

Like a mirage daring her to hope. Like a dream that would shatter the moment she looked away, and if she closes her eyes, if she sleeps, she’ll wake up the next morning in silks and golden handcuffs and Tante Heleen’s nails drawing blood from her skin and a voice dripping with honey and disdain in her ears, mocking her--

_ Did you really think you could get away, my little lynx? _

She stares at the lamp, burning softly, and thinks about how easy it would be to lean over and snuff the flame out.

Someone knocks.

She remembers to breathe.

“Come in,” she croaks.

The door swings open. Kaz Brekker stands in the doorway, cane in hand, watching her with a carefully neutral expression on his face.

She shouldn’t feel safer with the Bastard of the Barrel standing in the doorway, but she does. Brekker had bought her freedom, brought her here. He had given her this room. He had called her  _ dangerous . _

Dangerous. She wants to be dangerous, but here, now, she feels like nothing. She feels like misplaced hope and the starless Ketterdam night. She feels like the ghost of the girl she ought to be, bound to a body that had long since been stolen from her. 

Her daring had faded with the day’s light. She is nothing.

She wonders why Brekker is here, to see the girl who is nothing. She is too weak to climb for him, too unfamiliar with the city to stalk or thieve. She wonders if he’ll make her do so anyways.

_ (Irrationally, she wonders if he’s going to betray her, demand her services. She wonders if she’d even fight.) _

Instead, he asks, “Do you know how to use a knife?”

A heartbeat. 

She shakes her head.

He throws her something, and she reaches out to catch it out of pure reflex. It is a knife in a leather sheath, solid in her hands, the handle simple dark wood. She stares at it for a second, then pulls it out, and the sharp edge of the blade glints in the lamplight.

“Come,” he says, then turns on his heel and limps away without bothering to wait. She pauses for a moment, uncomprehending, then resheathes the blade and follows him.

He leads her down the stairs, out to an alleyway behind the Slat. Inej walks behind him like a shadow. When they arrive, he turns, and— 

And— 

And then a knife is held an inch away from her throat and his cane is against her leg and fire is flashing through her veins, too late, her melancholy mood evaporating in an instant.

“Stop,” he orders. She’s already frozen. “Lesson number one,” he nods at the knife still sheathed and held in her trembling hands, “If you’re going to follow men you barely know into dark alleyways, make sure your knife is out before he ambushes you. Got that?”

She flinches at the insinuation in his words, a tendril of fear and hatred curling, blooming in her gut. She almost tries to suppress it, but— 

This? She can use this. 

She grits her teeth and looks Brekker straight in the eye, then nods, once, firmly.

“Good,” he says approvingly, a razor-sharp grin on his face as he draws away, “Don’t waste my time. It’s not often Dirtyhands teaches rookies how to fight.”

He immediately begins demonstrating a grip which she clumsily tries to copy. He corrects her half a dozen times before she has it right, then begins to show her how to slash with the knife, then how to block and dodge. He moves at a vicious pace and she struggles to keep up but she  _ does. _

_ Ghafas never fall. _

Slowly, everything starts to fade away until there is only the ground beneath her feet and Brekker’s knife slicing through the air.

She learns how to attack, how to defend. She learns she needs to move closer to an opponent because her reach is shorter. She learns how to duck and dance away from strikes. She learns she has to pay attention to both of Brekker’s hands— “No one is going to fight  _ fair, _ ” he snarls— and her surroundings.

She learns that despite his limp and his cane, Brekker can move terrifyingly fast. She learns he’s using an old, blunted blade against her real one, but it doesn’t matter anyways because she can’t land a single hit. She doesn’t care.

It is not the wild performance of a show, nor the scripted passion of the Menagerie. It is brutal, raw survival, sweat and pain and steel, and she thinks she might grow to hate it but for now she can finally taste freedom.

It is  _ exhilarating. _

It is a long night, and by the time Brekker starts to ease off, she can dodge about one in five times. Her new clothes are soaked in sweat, her skin is covered in scratchy lines where Brekker’s knife had caught her, and her muscles are burning, the pain deliciously real and grounding. She can barely make it up the stairs to the room. 

The room. Her room. 

Saints,  _ her  _ room. 

She wants to laugh, the sudden burst of freedom bubbling through her veins like a drug, like salt and fire, a liquefied sun. The Menagerie has no hold on her. She has a  _ life  _ now— still not entirely her own, with what she owes— but one on her feet instead of forced on her back.

There is still so far to go, but… 

She’s no longer  _ there. _

She’s learning to fight. She’s not safe yet, but she will be, and she will  _ make  _ herself safe. And that’s what counts.

Her fingers find the hilt of her knife. Brekker had shown her exactly what she needed.  _ Dangerous _ _._ She will be dangerous, in time. 

_ The lynx is growing claws. _

She looks down at her knife, her first knife, and something sentimental in her rears its head for the first time in far too long. A name flits by and she snatches at it, rolls it between her teeth, shapes the words with her lips.

It  _ fits. _

Sankt Petyr. For bravery.

She turns her face upwards and closes her eyes briefly in thanks, then carefully attaches the knife and sheath around her left forearm, over her Menagerie tattoo.

She falls asleep seconds after her head touches the pillow.

**Author's Note:**

> i know sankt petyr goes on her right arm but like the sYMBOLISM
> 
> <3


End file.
